S.F. block named for trans icon Vicki Marlane

Vicki Marlane performing at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District in 2003. The 100 block of Turk Street will soon be named after the late trans pioneer. Photo: Courtesy Felicia Elizondo.

A street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood will soon be getting a new name to honor the legacy of one of the city’s most legendary transgender performers.

Street signs along the 100 block of Turk Street will have Vicki Marlane’s name added to them after the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution to recognize the pioneer, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 2011.

The board, unwilling to pass up an opportunity for wordplay, decided the block shall be known as “Vicki Mar Lane.”

Marlane, who gained the nickname “the lady with the liquid spine” for her sultry dance moves, was known for her decades-long career as a trans performer, most notably at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge on the block that will soon bear her namesake, according to the Bay Area Reporter.

Born Donald Sterger in Crookston, Minn., Marlane traveled with a circus for years before settling in San Francisco in 1966. After undergoing gender reassignment surgery in the 80s, she left the city and moved to San Diego.

But Marlane would return to San Francisco a decade later to start her residence at Aunt Charlie’s, starring in what would become a weekly show called “The Hot Boxxx Girls.” The Friday and Saturday night shows launched in 1998 and run to this day.

The renaming will mark the fourth street in San Francisco to be named for a prominent member of the LGBT community, following Alice B. Toklas Place, Jose Sarria Court, and Jack Kerouac Alley.

“This will give the transgender community the respect, acknowledgement, and recognition the transgender community deserves,” Felicia A. Elizondo, a.k.a. Felicia Flames, who was a close friend of Marlane’s, told the Bay Area Reporter.

The new street signs are expected to be unveiled at this year’s Trans March on June 27.